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Football bringing hope to Kroobay

In Freetown's Kroobay ghetto, the football pitch serves
as a haven of peace and offers education and hope to the children.

Sierra Leone has 5 million inhabitants, one fifth of whom live
in the capital, Freetown. And the vast majority of these one
million city-dwellers exist in conditions of misery that are
scarcely imaginable. Today we are in Kroobay, right in the centre
of Freetown. According to its inhabitants, this slum has existed
"for a very long time" but has "developed"
considerably since the civil war that raged between 1991 and 2000.
7,000 people now live here, 4,000 of them children. The area
consists of a warren of shacks, where the word hygiene has no
meaning, drinking water is a rare commodity, and where crime, AIDS
and drugs are all rife. All you need are a few lengths of wood and
a piece of corrugated sheeting and you have a house. Solid
constructions are the exception to the rule, and people survive by
selling absolutely anything on tiny stalls or in the street
itself.

Kroobay has grown up around the municipal dump, which is in fact
a sort of pestilential river carrying all of the town's waste,
a nest of bacteria that the inhabitants cross over every day.
Malaria, typhoid and cholera are common conditions here, and when
it rains, the whole district is flooded. One of the many as yet
unfulfilled plans is to build an embankment worthy of the name, but
that requires materials and equipment, and the aid is still being
waited on.

Right at the heart of this township, there is a football pitch.
On this heavily rutted clay surface complete with makeshift
goalposts, matches are held all day long, seven days a week. The
games are taken very seriously and, considering the poor quality of
the surface, the technical ability of the players, aged roughly
between eight and twenty, is highly impressive. Their physical
power and stamina are equally remarkable, especially as the
majority play barefoot or in sandals. A league exists involving
teams of different age categories, and the games there attract
sizeable crowds. There is even a fanfare that is respected by
everyone. It is hard to imagine how this organisation has arisen in
a township so steeped in chaos, but that is the character of the
place.

"We set up the Kroobay football association during the war,
in 1995," explains Saidu Jones Carew, one of the founders.
"The aim was to restore a bit of hope to the youngsters and
above all to bring them together and get them talking to each
other. That's because at the time, fear reigned in Kroobay like
everywhere else. What with the pro-government and pro-rebel forces,
it was very difficult to know where to turn. And on top of all
that, there were also conflicts between different areas. Maroon
Town and Kroobay had been squabbling for a long time, for example,
but football has brought an end to that."

Very quickly, teams and then a league were created.
"We've been working with the Sierra Leonean Federation
since 1998, and there are now 16 to 20 teams which play against
each other next to the national stadium. We write to each of the
communities to ask them which are their best teams. We're
interested in their behaviour as much as their standard of play,
and if they fit in, they're allowed to join the league,"
Carew adds.

These neighbourhoods and leagues produce almost all the best
Sierra Leonean players. Many of the national team that qualified
for the FIFA U-17 World Championship Finland 2003, along with
Alhassan Bangura (Watford FC) and most notably the huge star
Mohammed Kallon (AS Monaco) started out on these pitches. The
success of these "local lads" is a source of tremendous
pride for the founders and of great motivation for all the
children. "Unfortunately, we have to tell them that they
won't all become stars like Kallon. It's not easy, but
that's the reality," admits Tijan Barrie, coach of the
Wild Chase team.

These pioneers are responsible for another, perhaps even more
significant, achievement. Alongside theses matches, discussions
take place on sensitive subjects that are part of the harsh reality
of life in these slums: sexuality, AIDS, prostitution, drugs, and
crime. The organisers-coaches lead the discussions, but the more
senior players are also involved. One such 'old hand' is
the aptly named "Wise", captain of one of the best sides
in the neighbourhood. Aged 16, he explains that he "passes on
his knowledge of the perils of AIDS and prostitution, for example,
to the younger players." As proud as a peacock of his team and
his community, he adds, "I want to help the kids here,
who've got nothing." He actually went to school, but that
is far from the case for all.

And although concrete statistics are thin on the ground, all
without exception admit that Kroobay has been a better place since
the football association was founded. You only have to see one of
the older players ticking off a slightly over-excited youngster to
understand that the handing down of a way of thinking, of a form of
education by the "big brothers" has widely taken
hold.

Mohammed Koroma, one of Carew's assistants, believes in the
initiative wholeheartedly. "Our main aim is to develop
football, because through it, we want to unify the whole nation.
We've already succeeded in reconciling people, so why not unify
them now?" he says with a beaming smile. But the community is
short of every resource imaginable and is seeking aid for the new
league due to start in June. Saa Moses Lamin, coordinator of the
Youth in Action in Sierra Leone (YASAL) association, which supports
numerous clubs in the slums countrywide, believes that
"football should be used to unite people, encourage
discipline, initiative and respect for others, and to give hope to
communities." It is precisely these qualities that emanate
from the pitch in Kroobay.